


Her Guy Friday

by nicasio_silang



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, a chilling absence of character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Oh, come on, don’t try to be Cool Mom,” says Danny, who has a playlist in his car named Dr. Dad’s Sick Beats.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>This probably isn't the college AU you're looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Guy Friday

**Author's Note:**

> Breaking my own Beyonce-songs-only story naming convention for this one. Freeing and disappointing all at the same time.

The end of August in a 10th-floor room with windows that can’t be opened. Hubbub in the halls, plywood furniture, and the pervasive scent of Febreze. Mindy and Cleo and two tubs full of clothes.

“Is this a dorm for you and another fully-grown human being, or a matchbox for baby spiders?”

“Well, if you’d let me get an apartment with Hannah downtown...”

“Hah! Dream on, sprout. An apartment downtown doesn’t come with an RA who I can pay 50 bucks a week to preserve your virginity.”

“Mom, I lost my virginity a year ago.”

“Shh.” Mindy drops her box on the bed.

“Mom…”

“Shhhhhh.” Mindy puts a finger to Cleo’s lips. “That was with Brett. Brett doesn’t count. We hate Brett.”

“ _Dad_ liked Brett.” There’s only one intonation Cleo uses when saying _Dad_ to her mother. 

“Exactly. And what do we say about scrubs?”

An eye-roll heard from space.

“We don't want no.”

On cue, a stack of boxes enters the room, hits the far wall, and drops with a guttural noise of protest. Danny is revealed.

“What is this, a dorm room or a clown car?”

“You guys, this is one of the nicer dorms. There’s an actual Taco Bell downstairs.”

“That’s how we’re defining _nice_?”

“Actually,” Mindy slings an arm over Cleo’s shoulders, “She makes a good point.”

“Oh, come on, don’t try to be Cool Mom,” says Danny, who has a playlist in his car named _Dr. Dad’s Sick Beats_.

“You’re not cool, Mom.” Cleo escapes Mindy’s arm, grabs a Blue Ivy poster from an open box, and hunts around for double-sided tape.

“Cleo, I’m the coolest mom you will ever have. Danny, it’s either this or some hovel in the city with drug dealer landlords and STIs soaked into the floorboards.”

“You’re being hyperbolic again,” Cleo says, perched on a chair with tape stuck to three fingers.

“You know, I don’t think that word was even on the SAT, I think you just learned it to use against me.”

“Couldn’t it be both?”

Danny says this with way too many teeth and far too little guile. It’s a look that’s accompanied some of the stupidest shit he’s ever pulled. Today, though, it’s been a couple months since Mindy saw it last. She puts a hand on his cheek.

“Sometimes I wish I could divorce you all over again,” she says.

“Ugh, get a room, weirdos.” She hops down, and over their indignant reactions, she adds, “In fact, you can have this one. I gotta go to the bookstore and you guys still owe me fancy, parents-in-town dinner.”

“With both of us? Sure you don’t want to just…”

“I’m not choosing a favorite.”

“Yeah, stop trying to make her say who’s the favorite.” Danny does the arm over her shoulders thing. “Everyone knows you’re daddy’s little girl.”

“Don’t say that,” Mindy says.

“I don’t have a favorite! And I’m going! By myself! First day of the rest of my life! I’ll see you in a couple hours!”

“That is such a creepy thing to say, dude” says Mindy.

“Wait, hon, what are we supposed to do for a couple hours?”

“I don’t know, go look around town?”

“This is Seattle, it’s a whole city of people who couldn’t hack it on the east coast. There is nothing to see here.” Punctuated with a neck-slicing gesture.

“So have angry sex on the bunk bed, whatever.”

“ _Cleo_.”

“ _Cleopatra Castellano_.”

“Lahiri, Dad.” She grabs her purse, meets his eyes. “It’s Lahiri.” Then she leaves.

 

He gives her a minute to reach the elevator. Mindy takes a seat across the room, as far as that goes. When Danny turns around, he’s smiling. His voice is light. High, even.

“What did you do to my only child?”

“Gave birth to her, raised her, fed her, forgave her for crapping all over my couch.”

“ _Your_ couch?”

“Couch or kid, Castellano, choose an argument.”

“Fine: kid. One summer alone with you and you, what? You poison her against me?” 

“That isn’t what happened.”

“You knew I felt weird about being away for so long, you said it would fine, and then you pull this on me? I thought we were in a pretty good place, all of us, and you wanna rip my daughter away from me?”

“You’re being hyperbolic.” She shouldn’t smile. She smiles.

“This is low, even for you.”

“Excuse me? Do you want to hear what’s going on, or do you want to give yourself another heart attack?”

“That was an _asthma_ attack.” The gesticulation is getting unrealistically emphatic.

“Whatever, Methuselah.” 

“That’s the one thing you learned in church, isn’t it.”

“Yeah, and the one thing you learned from Holi was you look good in jewel tones, so who got the better end of that deal?”

“You did. I made a better accessory after that.”

“Okay, wow, that one kind of hurt.”

“Yeah, no shit.” He sits, finally, on the bed, their knees kitty-corner. “What the hell happened, Min? Is she mad at me?”

“It has nothing to do with you.” She knocks his foot with hers. “So put away the little kid voice.”

“It’s my name.”

“No, it’s hers. Look, we spent a lot of time with Rishi and Rekha and their friends, and their friends’ kids, and it was just us and a ton of other Indian people, it was great. And, you know, I look at Cleo and see this miracle kid, this beautiful, perfect little sassmonster who lucked out and got your mom’s rack and my nose. But she looked around and saw she was the lightest person there, and her hair was different, and, you know. She felt weird. She didn’t feel confident anymore as a…” Mindy’s hand dances in the air.

“As a woman of color,” he provides. 

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you, but I figured you’d go ballistic and say I was trying to steal her away from you.”

“Okay, okay.” He takes a breath.

“She hasn’t filed any paperwork or anything. She’s just trying it out for now,” she says.

“She could hyphenate.”

“She could _what_?”

“What?”

“She could _hyphenate_? When I wanted to do that you said hyphenated names showed weakness of character. You said I’d have to get baptized. You said we’d both be second class citizens.” 

“I was young, I was an asshole.”

“You were thirty-nine.” 

“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. Never bothers to color it. Very 2010’s Clooney. “Sorry.”

“Anyway.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. Jaw-length. Very 2000’s Rossellini. “Wanna make out?”

“Yeah, just give me like. Five minutes.” He pats her knee, a little absent.

“What do you, need your inhaler?” She jiggles his hand on her knee.

“I need to remember why I want to make out with you.” 

“I’m a young, hot, rich divorcée. Everyone wants to make out with me.”

“Young?” That fucking smile.

“Okay, now I need five minutes.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [After All Is Said and Done](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4336436) by [Likerealpeopledo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo)




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